1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to apparatus for sectionizing citrus fruit, and more particularly, it concerns an apparatus for rapidly and efficiently slicing citrus fruit into small, wedge-shaped sections such as might be used in fruit salads or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The meat, or juice bearing, portion of a citrus fruit is comprised of groups of interconnected juice sacs with each group being in the form of a segmental section which is surrounded by a membrane. The portions of the segment wall which extend more or less radially from the pithy core of the whole fruit and define the planar faces of the segment are referred to as radial membranes and intersect at the apex of the segment, while the portion of the segment wall which lies adjacent the outer peel of the fruit and defines the spherical face of the segment is called the outer membrane.
In the citrus fruit processing industry, "sectionizing" is normally referred to as an operation by which the naturally shaped, membrane free meat segments are removed from the citrus fruit, particularly grapefruit, and this operation can basically be performed by first removing the outer peel (albedo and flavedo) from the fruit, placing the peeled fruit in a fruit holder, cutting paths in the outer membrane through which cutting blades can be inserted, and finally cutting along the inner surfaces of the radial membranes to free the meat segments from their surrounding membranes. A machine which has achieved widespread commercial use for accomplishing the aforedescribed procedure is shown in prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,072,160 to Grotewold, issued Jan. 8, 1963.
While the aforedescribed citrus sectionizing operation is widely utilized in the citrus processing industry, it will be noted that the machinery for accomplishing the operation is relatively complex and expensive since the various sectionizing, or cutting, blades must be flexibly mounted so that they may rotate relative to the axial core of the fruit in order to "find" the membranes before they can cut a path through the fruit that will be directly adjacent to a membrane. Also, since cuts must be made on both sides of all of the radially projecting membranes of the fruit, a considerable number of cutting operations must be performed in order to completely free the meat segments.
Less complex mechanisms have, of course, been utilized in the past for segmentizing or slicing citrus fruit, but such mechanisms have generally not provided fruit sections which are commercially acceptable. One such prior art mechanism is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,629,168 to Shpentuk, issued on Feb. 24, 1953. This mechanism includes a plurality of uniformly spaced, radially extending cutting blades which are fixed in place upon a manually operable cutting head. While mechanism is adapted for cutting grapefruit halves so they may be eaten by a spoon in the conventional manner, it would not be useful for commercial operation since the cutting blades would not necessarily follow the membranes; thus, in the instances where the cutting paths were spaced slightly from the membranes during penetration of the fruit, very ragged and unattractive segments would result from the cutting operation.